Harris Sheds Radio Vendor Business to SCMS

Harris Broadcast is altering the way it sells certain products to the North American radio broadcast market.

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SHARES

Harris Broadcast is altering the way it sells certain products to the North American radio broadcast market.

The company has sold its third-party product resale business to Southern Coastal Marketing Service (SCMS). The change was effective July 2.

SCMS is privately held and based in Pineville, N.C., and headed by Bob Cauthen. Harris Broadcast is in Mason, Ohio, and part of a larger publicly held corporation. Financial details of the deal were not released.

Cauthen tells Radio World that SCMS “hired two of their employees, bought their inventory (and) have the phones, etc. transferred to us for all non-Harris manufactured items.” He said SCMS rearranged its warehouse extensively, remodeled some offices and added phone lines and staff to support the move.

The announcement appears to end a long era in which Harris was among the dominant U.S. providers of “dealer products.” That era dated to the days of what was called Allied Broadcast, a “box house” for equipment sales run by Roy Ridge that was later acquired by Harris.

The dealer resale business was separate from Harris’ core business manufacturing transmitters, consoles and other hardware, which is not affected by this announcement.

Dave Glidden, VP of marketing operations, stated, “Harris is committed to serving its radio customers, and this agreement with SCMS will further enable Harris to concentrate resources on creating and delivering to its customers the highest quality radio broadcast transmission and studio products in the industry.” But he said for customers who want one-stop shopping, “Harris will continue to offer a wide variety of third-party products as part of transmitter and studio systems.”